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South Korean officials arrive at the customs, immigration and quarantine office of South Korea after they met North Korean officials - Source: Reuters -
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A united Korea - combining Asia's fourth biggest economy with
one of its poorest - could surpass that of Germany or Japan in
economic might in the next 30-40 years, US investment bank Goldman
Sachs said.
In the aftermath of the 1950-53 Korean War, the North's economy
developed more quickly, but in the past few decades South Korea has
emerged as an economic powerhouse while the North has become a
backwater with an annual GDP of $US17 billion in 2008 - two percent
the size of the South's economy.
South Korea is one of the world's most wired countries whereas
North Korea has few computers, almost no Internet access outside
the capital Pyongyang and teaches students about the Web by showing
them photocopied papers of monitor displays.
The South has about 20 nuclear power plants while the North relies
on an electrical grid mostly built during Japan's 1910-45 colonial
occupation of Korea and cannot produce enough power to keep the
lights on at night.
South Korean estimates have said it would cost $US1 trillion or
more to absorb the North in the event of reunification.
There are almost no economic or cultural contacts between the two
Koreas, as there were in East and West Germany before unification
that could help cushion the blow.
Here is a look at the vast difference between the two
Koreas:
South Korea North
Korea
Population
2008
48.6 million 23.3
million
Life
expectancy
78.72 years 63.81
years
74.45 for males 61.23 males
82.22 for females 66.53 females
Mobile phone subscribers 46.5
million 20,000
Paved roads
2008
104,236 km
25,802 km
Auto production 2008
3.83 million 4,700
Trade value
2008
$US857 billion $US3.8
billion
Exports
2008
$US422 billion $US1.1
billion
State budget
2007
$US168 billion $US3.2
billion
Military
670,000 troops 1.18 million
Rice yield
2008
4.84 mln tonnes 1.86 mln tonnes
Steel production 2008
53.32 mln tonnes 1.28 mln tonnes
